Of all the articles I’ve written since starting this site, my “College Basketball Most Valuable Player,” column I wrote last February might be my favorite.

If you missed it last year (and I’m assuming most of you did), the premise started back in college, when my buddy John and I spent ample amounts of time ignoring our girlfriends, procrastinating from work, and watching and talking sports. Yes we were losers, but it sure beat the alternative of watching The Notebook for the 312th time with our significant others (Believe me, in comparison, a Warriors-Kings game on a Friday night wasn't nearly as bad).

Anyway, one day we were killing time in our poli-sci class, when John said to me, “Why don’t you put together ‘a list of your Top 50 college basketball players, and I’ll do the same. At the end of class we’ll compare. Truthfully, I don’t remember much from that first list, other than John looking mine over and saying to me, “Who the hell is Jordan Farmar?” Seven years later, John (a Nets fan) is now rooting for Farmar. Can you feel the irony?

So with that, the premise for this list was born. Here are a few rules for determining the rankings:

1. Competition Matters: My buddy Steve mentioned this last year and I liked it so much, I decided to keep it in, "AT I watched Northern Iowa last week, and it was a joke. It was a bunch of pale of 6'3 jump shooters running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Any team in the Big East would beat them by 50. And they're ranked No. 22 in the country! What a joke."

Granted, that Northern Iowa team ended up getting to the Sweet 16 and beating No. 1 ranked Kansas. But still, his point was clear: It's harder to get 21 points and 10 rebounds a night in the Big East than it is in the MEAC or America East. Sorry it's just true...

 

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On Thursday, we looked at the first group on these Power Rankings, the one's we labeled as the "Pretenders." The good teams, but not the great ones. The ones who might play into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, but have no chance of getting to the Final Four. To read those Power Rankings in their entirety, please click here.

Today it's time to look at the real contenders, teams that could conceviably win it all in March.

However, before we get to those teams, we have to start with one team that doesn't belong...

Should’ve Been On Yesterday’s List:

UConn: The crappy thing about posting these rankings in mid-week (instead of at the beginning) is that you’re always running the risk that something so egregious happens, that it makes you completely re-evaluate how you feel about a team. Unfortunately, that’s happened with UConn.

Heading into the week, I still felt pretty confident that when push came to shove, this was a good team. Say what you want about the recent two game skid against Louisville and Syracuse, those are both NCAA Tournament teams. Plus the rest of UConn’s resume doesn’t lie. The Huskies have more quality wins than anyone in college basketball. I’m not even talking about Texas or Kentucky, as much as some of the smaller victories like Marquette on the road or Tennessee at home. Eventually they all add up.

 

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The NFL season is now over. College football is now over. The NBA and NHL playoffs are still two months away. Same with Opening Day in baseball. So you know what that means, right? For six glorious weeks, college basketball takes center stage.

Now for most of you, I don’t need to give  the hard sell on the sport. Like anything else, college basketball has its flaws (mainly players leaving early and Coach K’s hair). But it also has some of the coolest venues around, great rivalries, and the best postseason in sports. Well, except for the WNBA.

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I broke out a College Basketball Power Rankings article, but with rivalry week upon us, now seemed like a good time. The article ended up running so long that I broke it down into two parts, with the “Pretenders,” running today, and the real, bona-fide, “Contenders,” running Friday morning. So be sure to check back then, and remember, just because your team is on one side of the pretender/contender debate on February 9, doesn't mean they can't be on the other side come March 9.

As always, I encourage your feedback and opinion, and if you’re really feeling frisky, feel free to call me a mean name or two. It’s ok, every girlfriend I’ve ever had did the same.

And whether you’re a college basketball expert, or just getting into the sport now, sit back, relax and enjoy!

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Ask any UConn fan about their basketball team right now and there’s a 96 percent chance they’ll respond like a doting dad talking about his son’s game-winning home run in Little League. “The kid on the mound was 6’2. He had a mustache. And Timmy still crushed it over the fence. You should’ve seen it.”

Well that’s us right now.

I don’t speak for every UConn fan when I say that this is our favorite team in years, but I speak for a lot of them. Especially considering what the UConn basketball program has been through in the past 24 months: A trip to the Final Four that might’ve ended in a championship if not for an injury to Jerome Dyson; An NCAA investigation; Illness that took our coach off the sideline for a big chunk of the 2010 season; punishment from the NCAA last summer; and most importantly, the team from hell last year. These past 24 months haven’t just been a “rollercoaster ride,” because really, that’d be an understatement. It’s been more like sitting in the passenger seat of a NASCAR car with a blindfold on. Sure things could end up ok, but really, with every turn, you’re just bracing for the worst.

Which is what has made this season so sweet. There are no egos, no drama and no guys worrying about their NBA futures; at least not any more than their college presents. I’ve always heard fans say their specific team is “a breath of fresh air,” and until recently, I never really understood what that meant. Now I do. I can’t remember enjoying a basketball team this much.

On Saturday, the first 36 minutes of the Huskies game with Louisville were a refresher course in exactly that. UConn was getting every bounce, break and call. Shabazz Napier and Jeremy Lamb were playing out of their minds. And the fact that Rick Pitino was pacing the sidelines dressed like a seedy Vegas strip club owner only added to the effect. Everything was turning up UConn.

Well almost everything anyway. That’s because as well as the team was playing, their star, Kemba Walker, was having maybe his worst game of the season. Our All-American guard couldn’t hit the broad-side of a barn with his jumper, and had a handful of uncharacteristic turnovers. Hell, he even missed a few foul shots, which is about as rare as seeing Jim Calhoun smile and praise someone.

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As I’ve mentioned many times on this site before, I love to read. Magazines and books. Periodicals and my sister’s diary. At the book store and on the toilet. About sports, society and business. It’s like they say, knowledge is power, right?

A book that I really enjoyed recently was Adam Carolla’s “In 50 Years We’ll All Be Chicks.” For those not familiar with Carolla’s work, the premise is exactly about what it sounds like it would be: How oversensitivity and political correctness are ruining our society. How we over empower our Starbucks baristas and under empower our school teachers. How men can no longer be men. And that essentially in 50 years, yes, we’ll all be chicks.

So what does the book have to do with sports? More than you might think.

Take Tuesday’s Kentucky-Alabama basketball game for example.

For those of you who watched the game like I did, sadly, the most talked about moment from the evening didn’t have anything to do with what happened on the court. Unfortunately all these days later, no one is talking about signature of the Anthony Grant era, or a great comeback from a young- but clearly mentally tough- Wildcats team.

Nope, the big storyline happened late in the second half, when in the heat of the moment, cameras caught John Calipari blue in the face, spitting out a profanity laced tirade aimed at freshman superstar Terrence Jones. In a tight game, Jones did something his well-compensated and wildly successful coach didn’t like, and the coach let him hear about it. Granted, Calipari did his yelling with language that would’ve made the cast of Jersey Shore blush, but still. I saw the whole thing go down live, and I’d be lying if I said I gave a second thought. It was Cal being Cal, a coach being a coach, and after processing the situation for 1/10 of one second, didn’t have a second thought about it. A few minutes later, Kentucky lost, I settled in for the night, and assumed that’d be the end of it.

Like most things in my life, I was wrong.

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Bill Parcells always used to say, “You are what your record says you are.” What a statement, huh? It’s simple. It’s to the point. It’s spot on. And if you don’t agree, well take it up with Parcells. Good luck.

Anyway, we’re getting to right about that same point in the college basketball season. The time when the easy games are over, and conference play has begun. When everyone knows your strengths, and you can’t hide your weaknesses. When, again, it becomes apparent that you are what your record says you are.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we know everything about these teams, and it doesn’t mean that if the tournament started today, we’d have it all figured out.

Still, we do have an idea though, which is why I thought it’d be fun to throw out 10 Predictions for the remainder of the college basketball season. I did this before football season, and it was a fun way to take stock of which teams were where, and what to expect going forward.

Obviously, all these predictions won’t come true. And honestly, if you know my track record, I’ll take two out of 10. But still, at least it’s something to guide us as we head into the last 2 ½ months of the regular season.

Enjoy.

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Over the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails asking when I’d start writing about college basketball a little more. Well, what can I say, I’ve been busy!

Ok, that’s a lie, but still. Really, I just wanted to get a few more games under my belt and watch every team once or twice more before spitting out my opinions. The last thing I'd want to do is look like an idiot. Well, anymore than I usually do anyway.

So with that, here is my College Basketball Midseason Report Card. Understand that the grades are only based on how teams have looked so far, and not how good they could be, or what they might project to down the road. I tried to cover every relevant team, and share every relevant opinion I have on them. Of course as time goes on, some of this will be proven incorrect, and in some cases irrelevant all together. But I figure this at least a nice jumping off point. And as always, I encourage you to share your opinions in the comments section below or by e-mailing. Whether you agree or not.

Also, one final note before we get to the Report Card. Because of travel, this will be my last article of the week, so with that, I tried to put a lot in here, give you something to browse over the next few days. Honestly, if I had to do it again, I’d probably have just broken it into two parts. Still, just approach this like a fine bottle of wine: Open this article up, take it in, let it sit for awhile, come back to it, and of course if you don’t like it, spit it back in my face.

Now, let's get to the grades.

 

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We’ve all lost perspective as sports fans. That all I’ve got. 

At least that’s the only thing I can think of when it comes to the UConn women’s basketball team.

Over the past week, as UConn inched closer to the win total of John Wooden’s UCLA teams of the early 1970’s and since passed them, I’ve heard a lot of chatter from a lot of people, who have all suddenly become experts on something they know nothing about. I’ve heard them say that this record really means nothing. That their competition is a joke. That the sport is a joke. That at the end of the day, it’s “just women’s basketball.”

Sadly what I haven’t heard is what’s most important of all. That since the streak started back on April 6, 2008, the UConn women have not only been the most supremely dominant team in sports, but also the mentally toughest and the best coached as well. Nobody gets to 89 wins in a row in any sport, at any level, by accident, yet all I hear is more excuses for why we shouldn’t be impressed by the streak, than reasons to celebrate. Which is a shame.

Again, I think we’ve lost some perspective as fans. 

And if you don’t mind I’d like to go ahead and do my best to provide some. Starting with that previously mentioned date, April 6, 2008, when all this madness began.   

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Twelve months. What a difference 12 months makes.

Twelve months ago, chance and circumstance brought me to New York City on December 9th, which in turn brought me to Madison Square Garden for the Kentucky-UConn game being played that night. I wasn’t planning on attending. But I’m a UConn fan and a UConn graduate, I was in New York, and figured, “Why the hell not?”

Unexpected to everyone in the arena- myself included- that night turned into a classic, one of those games that you’ll stumble across a replay of three, four, five years from now and get sucked into watching. It was physical. It was emotional. And when UConn lost, it was a kick in the stomach.

At least for me it was. But as I documented in my column the following day, it was anything but for Kentucky fans. That game wasn’t just a win, but the win. The win that welcomed in the John Calipari era. The win that washed away the pain of the Tubby Smith and Billy Gillispie years. The win that let the college basketball world know that Kentucky basketball- the team and brand that I’d grown up hearing about, but never seeing- was back after an extended disappearance. As I said in the article, for Kentucky fans, that win shouldn’t have meant so much. But it did.

Well 12 months later, here I am. I’m not the one patting Kentucky fans on the back and congratulating them, but instead, it’s the opposite. My team is back on top of the college basketball world. Maybe only for a day, a week or a month, but it feels good none the less. Last night’s win in the Maui Invitational, in November, in a time when we have real things to be thankful for (our friends, our family, those protecting us overseas), shouldn’t have meant so much. But for this one fan, it did.

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There are a few days every year that I look forward to above all others. The day of the Super Bowl. Opening Day of Major League Baseball. The day a fresh group of 18-year-old girls moves into the college right down the street from where I live. And for the last few years, the “College Basketball Tip-Off Marathon,” has been added as one of those days.

Simply put, I’m a college hoops junkie. That tends to happen when you grow in a state where the highest paid government employee is Jim Calhoun. So for me, getting the college hoops marathon this early in the season, is not only a gift, but a literal blessing from God. One that momentarily makes me forget that within a few weeks it’s going to be -400 degrees outside.

This year, I spent the college hoops marathon taking notes, and adding them to my vastly expanding database of useless information on these teams (Maybe it’ll finally pay off in March for once). I don’t have a great feel for every team, but Tuesday gave me an opportunity to get a much better feel on a lot of them. And before Thanksgiving, what more could a guy ask for?

Anyway, below are a dozen “big picture,” things I think about college hoops so far. Some are on teams we saw yesterday, and others from teams and players we saw over the weekend.

Nothing is set in stone, but Tuesday was a good primer for the next five months to come.

Here are 12 things I’m thinking…


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